Two child care plans — one for the rich, one for the rest

All of a sudden, it looks like the battle lines in the coming federal election may be less over whether to send our warplanes to Iraq and more over whether to send our children to day care.

With their announcement this week of plans for a national child care program, the NDP has not only proposed the beginnings of a solution to a gaping social need in Canada, it also has carved out territory where its contrast with the Harper Conservatives could not be starker.

Like the NDP, the Conservatives are planning to take a chunk of money from the surplus accumulating in Ottawa and spend it on a big initiative related to children. But that’s where the similarities end.

By contrast, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives want no national plan. They oppose a strong role for government — or any role — in meeting the needs of working parents with kids. Their answer is to give parents money in the form of tax cuts to spend as they want. But for the vast majority of Canadian parents, the Conservatives’ promised centerpiece — a tax break allowing income-splitting for parents with children under 18 — will offer virtually nothing, and that may be overstating its generosity.

But before we get to the latest Conservative plan, let’s recall what the Conservatives did in 2006, when Paul Martin’s Liberal government proposed a national child care plan but was toppled shortly after by the Conservatives and NDP. After winning the election, Harper scrapped the plan and instead announced that Ottawa would pay $100 a month per child to families with children under age six.

Not content to just discard a national child care plan, Harper, after winning a majority in 2011, became bolder in advancing two key prongs of his arch-conservative agenda: enriching the rich and encouraging women to stay home. Promising to introduce income-splitting offered him a splendid opportunity to do both, since the benefits of the costly $3 billion tax cut would go almost exclusively to rich families with stay-at-home mothers.

Harper’s message to women: marry rich and stay home. No longer barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, today’s woman should be … in the kitchen, pregnant and wearing Guccis.

Tax breaks typically offer bigger benefits the higher you go up the income scale, but the imbalance in the case of income-splitting is so profound that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) calls it “inequality by design.”

As the CCPA notes, fully 86 per cent of Canadian families would receive no benefit whatsoever. Meanwhile, one per cent of all families (not hard to guess which one per cent) would get an average tax saving exceeding $6,500.

Imagine a cartload of federal surplus cash bypassing virtually every home in the country — before making a beeline for a few well-to-do enclaves and dropping thousands of dollars on doorsteps.

(The Harper government also announced last week that it was enriching the child fitness tax credit from $500 to $1,000 — another measure where the benefits are highly skewed to the rich, who are far more likely to have a spare $1,000 to spend on their children’s sailing or riding lessons.)

But back to income-splitting. Among the losers are working women. This is revealing, since governments typically use tax incentives to encourage certain kinds of behaviour. Harper’s message to women: marry rich and stay home. No longer barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, today’s woman should be … in the kitchen, pregnant and wearing Guccis.

The Conservatives’ income-tax splitting plan is so inequitable that even the late Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty — perhaps suffering a twinge of conscience after a political career spent rewarding the rich — was moved to question its fairness.

That — and the fact that Conservatives continue to lag in the polls — may yet cause the government to retreat from their income-splitting promise.

But if they felt they could get away with it, this is what they’d really want to do with $3 billion of our hard-earned surplus: Hand $6,500 each to some of our richest, most ‘traditional’ families, and give most other Canadians precisely nothing.

Winner of a National Newspaper Award, Linda McQuaig has been a reporter for the Globe and Mail, a columnist for the National Post and the Toronto Star. She was the New Democrat candidate in Toronto Centre in 2013. She is the author of seven controversial best-sellers, including Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and other Canadian Myths and It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet. Her most recent book (co-written with Neil Brooks) is The Trouble with Billionaires: How the Super-Rich Hijacked the World, and How We Can Take It Back.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

34 comments on “Two child care plans — one for the rich, one for the rest”

Since the Canadian public bought the 100.00 non-refundable tax credit the last time, I’m not too convinced that they’ll have the intelligence to recognize a good thing when it’s dropped at their feet again!

30% of families have no interest in using daycare, and simply prefer to look after their own kids.

Whether income-splitting gives them a $500 or $5,000 tax break, they deserve equal support for *their* choice. What I see in your – and most mainstream media – article, is basically that they should continue to receive *no* support.

BTW, while we see the “only 15% of Canadian households will benefit from income splitting (number is actually much higher when you factor in other forms of splitting, such as pension splitting), care to guess what % of families would benefit from (very expensive) daycare subsidies? (Hint: it’s less than 15%. In other words, the *vast majority* of Canadians won’t benefit from daycare.).

Oh, I see. So that means every family has young children, and that there are no households that are just singles, couples, families with adult children, retired people etc. Would you like me to show you the actual StatsCan numbers for families that need daycare TODAY? Actually, why don’t you provide your estimate, and then I’ll correct it for you?

I am referring to actual census data, which shows the % of families with children in different age groups. See: http://goo.gl/SJs08M

For example, only about 10% of all families in Canada have children who are all aged 0-6. Ignoring the fact that 30% of those families look after their own kids, then clearly fewer families are going to benefit from a national daycare program than from income-splitting…although you’ll never read in the media that Mulcair’s daycare program will *only* benefit less than 10% of Canadian families. OTOH, we constantly hear how income-splitting will *only* benefit 15% of Canadian families. Why is that?

Many professional and academic people will likely tell you that it takes years of hard work to build up a good reputation but it takes only one bad mistake to destroy that hard earned credibility.

Unfortunately, StatsCan now has the dubious distinction of committing an error of 21000 % (i.e. 42000 jobs divided by 200 jobs is a factor of 210). How many would believe any organization that changes its numbers so drastically a week after reporting them?

Besides, I do believe the census you cited is from the long ago discredited long form census that few believe anymore because it had been gutted and made non mandatory by Tony Clement’s government.

BTW, the claim that income splitting will only benefit 15% was also made by the right wing thinktanks which might explain why it is often quoted. In contrast, Mulcair’s daycare proposal was only made a day ago. I am expecting that we will be hearing more about who it actually benefits in the coming days as the academics start analyzing the numbers.

Family characteristics don’t change dramatically. If less than 10% of all families had children under-6 in 2012, you can bet that the number is still less than 10% – and I haven’t even accounted for the 30% of families that wouldn’t be interested in a national daycare system.
Andrew Coyne’s article from yesterday (?) points out that not all families want a national daycare system, but note that he didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to attach a number to his claim. It’s not hard to find. Even in Sweden (daycare heaven) 30% of families don’t want someone else looking after their kid(s).

“who are far more likely to have a spare $1,000 to spend on their children’s sailing or riding lessons” that you get back in taxes? If you do not have $1000 a year to spend on your child, get off your ass.

I just read Neil Macdonald’s report on the class divide in the US as it relates to law enforcement on the CBC page. THere is no difference between the 2 countries where the poor, homeless or here, the aboriginals are targeted. The wealth gap for gov’t programs is just as starkly obvious here as you have described here, Linda. Thank you.Now we must get to work defeating the harper regime.

Over 40 years of research on the cost-benefits of quality child care show significant benefits for all families but a massive return on investment for impoverished families(see Perry Pre-School study : After Age 40).
The Perry longitudinal study shows returns of over $15 for every dollar invested after 30 years as compared to a $5 return for every dollar invested after 10 years!

That is quite a statistic. So, if I am interpreting this correctly, the yields from the investment increase as time goes on? I would love to get my hands on the article. It is similar to preventative health care where every dollar invested in nutriton and physical activity can yield $3-$6 back. It just makes sense to be proactive about theses things as everyone benefits. In this case, women, children, the family unit, and the economy.

I disagree with Ms McQuaig on nearly every point, sadly. It is surprising to hear any woman say that the roles women have had for centuries are useless. Being a full time caregiver of children at home is a very labor intensive but creative endeavour that well done can tap all the creative juices – mentor, teacher, nutritionist. It’s all how you define it and how hard you work at it. What matters to me is that choice in the feminist movement should involve really equal viable options, not insults and penalties. All mothers work . Income splitting in its purest form, with universal application would benefit over 95% of households. The Harper plan to limit amount shared is a problem but need not be if we expand the principle. Right now pensioners and parents of handicapped kids already split income and it is enormously popular. The current system benefits dual earner houses – dual salaries, dual deductions for medical and dental, dual pensions, then the per child daycare space funding of $5000 by government, then the $7000 per child deduction to parents. At home parents on one income with only one set of all the above don’t get any match to the daycare breaks yet pay sometimes 40% higher tax. That is the unfair part. And increasing the tilted benefit to daycare users insults the basic human rights principles of choice and equal benefit under the law. Quebec used to be a have province. Now it is a have not. Its universal daycare is nearly bankrupting it and other provinces are subsidizing it.Why would we take that show on the road?

You have captured the essence of the issue by mentioning the “40% higher tax”.
If the tax penalty borne by 1 and most-1 earner families was on the order of a 10% difference, the issue would have died off decades ago. Unfortunately, we’re not talking about penalties of a “beer and popcorn” magnitude. We’re talking about families earning roughly the Canadian median family income having to buy the government the equivalent of a new Ford Focus every 3-4 years, which is a LOT of money.
Most 1-earner families are fair minded, and would not object to paying slightly higher taxes, but the current disparity is obscene and needs to be reduced.

This whole issue is moot essentially. The issue of affordable daycare goes directly to our costs beyond that. Consider Hydro One ( and their failed renewable initiative ), and the telecom monopoly in Ontario. We pay more here than just about anywhere else in the world for these services. We bear a tax load as well which is incredibly high compared to others ( if it is not the highest ). In Canada we set the cost of pharmaceuticals instead of procuring the best price. There is so much our governments can do to reduce these costs for the consumer (parents) which in turn should reduce the cost of health insurance and health care. Free up money for people to spend within their communities, and allow companies to hire more and expand. We also have an exceptionally inequitable tax system favoring the rich and corporations. Childcare centers do not charge exorbitant prices for the service they provide. these costs prevent women from staying home. It is becoming harder and harder for a family to be raised on a single income. The solution is not more government subsidies costing us even more.

Thanks Ms. McQuaig – Our daughter Katie graduated from Niagara College with a diploma in Early Childhood Education and has an undergraduate degree from Ryerson in ECE. After graduating from Ryerson University she worked in Oakville at the Halton & Region Childcare Centre for 2 years and has just returned to McMaster University to obtain a ,”Teaching Certification” and then hopefully find a job some where in Ontario. Katie still would like to work with the infants and toddlers but wages, benefits, and a pension plan,”have to be” part of the employment package. That was the reason why she left the Halton & Region Childcare Centre. I’d like to see the Federal Rate of Corporate Taxation gradually returned to 1960 levels(41%) . People should try to pick up and read your 1987 book,”Behind Closed Doors – How The Rich Won Control of Canada’s tax System…And Ended Up Richer” Viking Publishing. I have little faith in today’s NDP,I hope we get a National Childcare Programme.

McQuaig, don’t you know that both the Conservatives and Liberals work for the banks? Now, harper has got his man, Mulcair, as leader of the New Dummies Party. The Harper government has allowed the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to join with (4 banks) CIBC World Markets Inc., National Bank Financial Co. Inc., Scotia Capital Inc., TD Securities Inc., (4 pension funds) Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, Fonds de solidarite des travailleurs du Quebec, Alberta Investment Management Corp., Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, (3 investment companies) Desjardins Financial Group, Dundee Capital Markets Inc., GMP Capital Inc. and The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company (provides actuarial statistics), to form the Maple Group Acquisition Corp. (name now changed to TMX Group Ltd.) to own TMX Group Inc. which owns the Toronto and Vancouver (TMX Venture) Stock Exchanges. The banks own stock brokerages. The pension funds do NOT! Guess who is going to buy what the banks and their wealthy clients want to sell or sell what the banks and their wealthy clients want to buy? The Harper government has allowed the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and some of the largest Canadian pension funds to invest over $5 billion in Israel. Is it any wonder why Harper supports Israel? People are living longer. The statistics are out of whack and both Canada Pension and the Old Age Pension are in financial trouble. Pensioners who have medical problems causing a drain on the Health Care System are dying of ‘natural causes’ INDUCED by Electro Magnetic Radiation – heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetic problems, so ‘Off with their heads!’ But it isn’t the pensioners who are causing a drain on the Health Care system. It is the medical frauds and the drug companies. The spine is the tree of life out of which grows branches we call arms and legs. Three simple exercises rejuvenate the spine – repeatedly touching the toes, sit ups, and leg raises (preferably while lying down, but also while standing or sitting). The spine is primary, all the organs are secondary and depend on the health of the spine. People who do yoga and claim they feel great afterwards don’t even know that the exercises are for toning up the spine and the muscles supporting the spine. Look at a picture of the sperm under an electron microscope – a head, containing the brain, and a tail which becomes the spine after being first absorbed in the creation of the fetus. The spine is PRIMARY, the organs – heart, liver, lungs, etc. are SECONDARY and depend on the health of the spine! The medical quacktitioners (and their drug lords) make their money off of these peripherals. Every spring and fall we are told to get our flu shots. Why? Because they don’t prepare for the change in the temperature. It’s a matter of circulation. When you feel a cold coming on, just do the squat exercise according to how you feel and don’t eat anything for eating produces more calories to be burned off by the exercise. People put the cart before the horse by eating beef which is only to be used AFTER sex or lifting weights. Read and try to understand Christ’s parable of the prodigal son. The analogy is – God is the father, the elder son was celibate, the younger wasted his inheritance (his semen) on harlots. The reason yogis don’t eat the flesh of the ‘fatted calf’ or beef of any age is because it stimulates the urge for sex, which defeats what they are trying to achieve. AIDS, a disease made in the U.S. of A., could be cured by eating very hot peppers like Jalapeno, but you first have to drink milk to protect the mucus lining of the stomach. No germ can withstand of burning of the pepper which burns all orifices.Sorry to take up space here but the criminal C.S.I.S. and their partners in crime, C.S.E., won’t let me warn the pensioners about what’s going on in this so-called ‘best country in the world’. Now let them come after me. I expect them!

That fat fool, Hugo Chavez, was murdered by electro magnetic radiation. I tried several ways to warn him but he believed wanted to be near his mentor, Fidelissimo, and ignored my warnings. I even sent my nephew to the Venezuelan embassy in Georgetown, Guyanas. They treated him with condescension. He was later attacked with the same EMR and had never-before-felt pains all over his body. That was for the pains he took to warn the fat clown. Four Latin American Presidents (all socialists) also developed cancer through EMR

A staff sergeant of N.R.P.S. told me that the Harper government isn’t an evil government. They just want the most good for the most people. So, I guess it’s okay to get rid of the percentage who are old and sick, eh? He asked me if my daughter who is moderately mentally handicapped also is subject to the same EMR attacks. When I answered yes, he told me he would try to help me. I wondered how he could help me when his Chief refuses to do so. I later called him and left a voicemail telling him that his words – the most good, etc. – convinced me that they ARE killing off pensioners who are, in addition to getting pensions, are also a drain on Canadfa’s Health Care system.

The electricity in my home is remotely controlled. I suspect they’re using a Java program. When I tried to ;learn Java they stopped me. My phone is wiretapped 24/7. My emails, telephone calls, my mail are intercepted. They keep interfering while I type this post, moving words around, and other annoyances. They pretend to be employees of companies I call, anything their tiny ‘minds’ can think of. Steal documents or money or bus passes out of my home, or my pockets, my food, my dogs’ food. As any Indian or Arab will tell you only angels or djinns (genies) are capable of this. If so, these spirits must be electrical.